Economic Nonsense: 15. Protection of domestic industries will safeguard jobs

Sometimes when jobs are threatened by cheap imports there are calls for government to step in and safeguard those jobs by subsidies, tariffs or import quotas.  The aim is to make the domestic goods artificially cheaper by subsidy, or to make the imported goods more expensive by taxing them. Some domestic jobs can be retained, at least temporarily, by this tactic.  But the more expensive domestic goods will not be able to compete on world markets outside the country.  They will find their foreign market share diminishes as people opt for the cheaper ones. Where subsidies are used, domestic taxpayers are made poorer; where tariffs are used domestic customers lose access to cheaper goods.  In both cases they are paying to support the industry concerned.

Some years ago in the UK the Lancashire textile industry was protected in this way.  It might have prolonged its decline, but it did not stop it.  Mass-produced low-cost textiles were being made more cheaply by foreign competitors.  Eventually the UK textile industry moved to high added value luxury and designer products that sold at a premium in both domestic and foreign markets.  Some UK textile products have become world-beaters, without the need for subsidies or tariffs to protect the jobs they sustain.

The advent of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which succeeded the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), outlaws most of this kind of protection by multilateral agreement.  This means that calls to protect domestic jobs by such means now fall upon deaf ears.  The government has signed pledges not to engage in such practices, in return for the agreement of its trading partners to refrain similarly.

There are still grey areas, though, with Boeing and Airbus each alleging that the other receives indirect government support.  It is generally true that when governments all try to protect domestic jobs at the expense of foreign ones, everybody loses.  The world found this to its cost in the era of the Great Depression.

Why we shouldn't clamp down on zero-hour contracts

The Office for National Statistics has revealed that 697,000 people (about 2.26% of employees) are on zero-hours contracts in their main job, up more than 100,000 on a year ago. Such contracts make life uncertain for the employees concerned, who may not know from week to week, or even from day to day, whether they have paying work. Some 33% of those on zero-hours contracts say they would like to work more. So should we be clamping down on zero-hours contracts? No, we should not.

First, it is absolutely correct that zero-hours contracts have become far more common in the last two or three years. They hovered at about 0.5% for most of the period since 2000. They rose in use quite slowly between 2005 and 2012, then shot up to just under 2% in 2013 and to that 2.26% figure in 2014.

However, the unemployment rate has also come down in the last two or three years as well. In 2011 it stood at over 8%. Now it is less than 6%, and seemingly headed steadily down. Even though zero-hours contracts represent only a very small part of the labour force, it seems reasonable to argue that the two trends are related. The economic outlook is brighter, but is still uncertain; businesses remain unsure about the future, unsure about their markets, unsure of how much they should invest, unsure of how many workers they can justify taking on. A bust-up in the eurozone, for example, or a general election that delivers an unfavourable or unworkable government. might change the outlook completely for many UK businesses. So the only way that they can rationally expand their production, and be ready if things really do boom, it so cut their employment risk. Hence zero-hours contracts.

Remember too that even though the ONS talks about people's 'main' job, they might not be the only income earners in a household. The same is true of those on the minimum wage: many of them will be secondary earners. In fact, 34% of those on zero-hours contracts are aged 16-24 and half of those are in full time education. To them, a minimum wage job or a zero-hours contract, while frustrating, is not a disaster, and the extra income, however low or intermittent, is welcome.

Critics – you know who – say that the government has allowed a 'low-pay culture' to go 'unchecked'. So what would be their solution? Ban zero-hours contracts? Raise the minimum wage yet further? The inevitable result would be that employers would no longer be willing to take the risk of employing so many people. And first to go would be young people, with fewer skills and less understanding of workplace culture than more experienced employees, and secondary earners, often women. There would be fewer 'starter' jobs through which young and unskilled people could gain experience, more young people trapped in benefits, and a rise in unemployment more generally.

What will do in zero-hours contracts, of course, is continuing economic growth. As unemployment falls, businesses will find it harder to attract employees, and workers and potential workers can become more choosy about the jobs they take. Zero-hours contracts will once again become a very small part of the employment market. Growth, employment, greater security. Job done, and not a politician in sight.

Better to reverse QE than raise interest rates

That is, of course, a chart of the American, rather than UK, money supply. But much the same has happened to our own money supply under the same QE program. And it's also telling us that it would be better to reverse QE than it would be to raise interest rates. So the idea that that debt could just be cancelled doesn't fly we're afraid. We all know that at some point we're going to have decent economic growth again, unemployment will fall to a minimum (that frictional unemployment that reflects people changing jobs, not involuntary unemployment) and that then inflation will start to rise again. We all also know, because Milton Friedman told us so, that inflation is always a monetary phenomenon. And, finally, we all also know that base money creation is more inflationary than credit creation: or boosting M1 leads to more inflation than the same boosting of M4 would cause.

It's putting those all together that tells us that we should reverse QE. Think through the future: so, we get out of this liquidity trap, this zero lower bound. The velocity of money returns to something like normal. At which point we've got two choices as to how to reduce the accompanying inflation. One is to raise interest rates, the standard response. But that works on M4, it slows credit creation. We could also reduce that money supply by reducing M1: reversing QE. And as above, we think that shrinking M1 would have more effect on reducing inflation than reducing M4 would.

Another way of saying the same thing is that the amount we'd have to raise interest rates to choke off inflation will be higher if we don't reverse QE than if we do. And this will be true for decades to come as we gradually get back to the right sort of relationship in size between M1 and M4. Or, not reversing QE means that we have to accept more economic pain to reduce inflation than if we reverse QE. For decades.

Which rather puts the kibosh on that idea so trendy over on hte left. Which is that as one part of the government owns the debt of the government we could just cancel that debt and reduce the debt burden. But doing that permanently increases that base money supply and thus permanently increases the interest rates we'll need to slay inflation in the future.

So, reverse QE before raising interest rates.

Economic Nonsense: 14. Government can create jobs by spending

Government can certainly create the appearance of new jobs by spending.  The minister can be televised proudly cutting the tape to open a government-funded business employing 100 people.  The problem is that government has to take that money from the private sector in order to do so.  It can do so by taxation, inflation or borrowing, and the effect is to give the private sector less money to spend.  That, in turn, means lower demand for its goods and services, less economic activity and fewer transactions.  The net result is that jobs are lost in the private sector as a result. Part of the political problem is that the government-funded jobs can be seen, with ministers taking credit.  The private job losses take place quietly, without people realizing that they are the result of government activity.

There has been much discussion in academic circles as to whether the publicly-funded jobs gained are more or fewer than the private sector jobs lost, but there is a respectable literature to suggest that they are fewer, and that 100 jobs created with public money will result in more than 100 jobs disappearing or not happening in the private sector.

Another part of the problem is that government-funded jobs are created in accord with political rather than economic priorities.  The projects sanctioned are those that find favour with ministers, rather than those created to meet demand.  They can be done to court electoral popularity rather than to satisfy economic needs.  Jobs funded by public money often need public money to sustain them afterwards, and risk disappearing if public subsidy is withdrawn at some stage in the future.  Governments are notoriously bad at "picking winners" to support with public funds; it is not their own money they are putting at risk, so they are less likely to do cautious and full accounting.  Private investors tend to be more hard-headed since they stand to incur any losses that come about.

Logical Fallacies: 13. Petito principii

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6etd8_ebOA  

Madsen's latest video on logical fallacies examines the 'petito principii'.

You can pre-order the new edition of Dr. Madsen Pirie's How to Win Every Argument here

This is vile, a stain upon our society

There are those who think that we here at the ASI are simply concerned with economics, or the economy. This is not so: we are really about liberty and freedom, it's just that we apply those concepts to matters economic as well as to sexual, legal and all the other realms of life. At which point we draw attention to this, something that is entirely vile, a stain upon our society:

But what sort of rule of law allows an innocent person to be locked up for many years and then denied any compensation for their wrongful imprisonment?

Outside the summit jamboree, for which a ticket would cost you £1,750, were some people who could have given the delegates a slightly less rosy picture of Britain’s supposed superiority. They included those who had been wrongly convicted but who have been denied any redress under the ruling introduced last year, which virtually says that it is not enough to be innocent – in most cases you have to find the real culprit of the crime for which you were convicted before you can be compensated.

Among those challenging the new regulation is Victor Nealon, a former postman, who was convicted of attempted rape in 1996. He served 17 years, 10 years longer than his recommended tariff, because he continued to protest his innocence. In 2013, after fresh DNA evidence taken from the clothes of the victim pointed to “an unknown male” as responsible for the crime, Nealon was freed with just £46 in his pocket to try to rebuild his life. The Ministry of Justice now declines to compensate him because, under the new rules, his innocence has to be proved “beyond reasonable doubt”.

Another man who feels equally bemused by this is Barry George, whose conviction for the murder of Jill Dando in 1999 was quashed in 2007. The police file on who was the real murderer in this case remains open, but George has never received compensation for his time behind bars.

These rules started to change back in 2006. About which was said this:

CHARLES CLARKE’S announcement that he is limiting the compensation available to those wrongfully imprisoned has been met with the hoots of derision it deserves. What is more important to work out is why the Home Secretary made such a lunatic decision in the first place. The proffered reason, to save £5 million a year, is simply beyond satire. The Government, in its infinite wisdom, annually disposes of about £500 billion of the nation’s production: denying those innocents unjustly banged up will save some 0.001 per cent of public expenditure. Just to provide some context, the £5 million saving is less than the £5.7 million spent in 2003 on subsidising the swill bins at the Houses of Parliament. No, it can’t be about the money. The mark of a liberal society is that more care and attention is paid to those innocents wrongly found guilty, than to the guilty who escape justice. Any criminal justice system designed and run by fallible human beings will make mistakes. The important thing is how we react when a miscarriage of justice occurs. Shamefully, under the Home Secretary’s proposals those who find their guilty verdict overturned at their first appeal will have no right to compensation. For others compensation will be capped at £500,000. But let’s remember this. It takes from 20 months to two years to get a first appeal against a conviction heard: long enough for those convicted to lose careers and jobs, marriages and houses. Yes, there always will be those who unjustly enjoy Her Majesty’s hospitality, and whatever compensation we offer in a monetary form will not be enough to fill the gap of years of liberty denied, lives wasted, opportunities lost and families sundered. But do we really expect those afflicted by the mistakes of the state apparatus simply to shrug and smile it off as just one of life’s unfortunate things? Can the Home Secretary not see that it is our solemn duty to those wrongfully convicted that we both apologise and make amends as best we can? ... Whatever the motivations for this decision they do not change the fact that it is a disgrace. Just as mother always said: you make a mistake, you apologise, make what amends you can and promise not to do it again. When the State makes a mistake and steals someone’s liberty it is indeed our duty, to compensate those wronged. Whether the Home Secretary is ignorant of this moral fact, or simply wishes to ignore it for other reasons, it is appalling. Shame on you, Mr Clarke, shame on you.

We have not changed our view. This is a vileness that must be eradicated from Britain.

Economic Nonsense: 13. Development and growth harm the environment and cause pollution

This is misleading.  The early stages of economic development can certainly adversely affect the environment and cause pollution.  When a nation is lifting itself out of abject poverty and subsistence-level life for its citizens, it values the wealth being generated more than it minds the environmental degradation that accompanies it. The early stages of Britain's Industrial Revolution saw factories going up, chimneys belching smoke, and land degraded by mining.  For people at the time these factors were less important than the improved standard of living it brought, a standard that lifted most of them out of precarious subsistence and the ever-present threat of starvation.

When Britain grew rich enough, they were able to afford a cleaner environment.  Money was available to spend on adequate sanitation and sewage treatment, on cleaning up land damaged by development, and by controlling emissions with legislation such as the Clear Air Act.  Other developing economies went through similar stages.  Today it is the rich countries that can afford to produce more cleanly.

Newly developing countries pollute more because clean production is more expensive.  Wood burning and coal burning pollute heavily; gas burning and electricity production can be done more cleanly.  Today China, which depends heavily on coal as an energy source, faces major air pollution problems in its cities and contamination of its rivers.  But development has lifted most Chinese out of malnourishment, and now they are at the stage where they have enough wealth to start redressing their environmental problems.

Development and growth need not cause pollution and environmental damage once countries become wealthy enough to use cleaner technology.  Wealth and technological progress can solve this problem; living more simply cannot.

Now that we've extended marriage to all let's not make it compulsory

Recent years have seen significant changes in marriage: it's now essentially available to all potential pair couplings of whatever gender definition one wants to use. That doesn't therefore mean that it should become compulsory though. And yet that is roughly what is being proposed:

In 2007, the Law Commission recommended reforming the laws that apply to cohabitants if they separate but no legislation followed. There are nearly 6 million unmarried people living together, many under the illusion that they have the same rights as married couples if they separate.

Resolution is calling for a legal framework of rights and responsibilities for unmarried, cohabiting couples to provide some legal protection and secure fairer outcomes at the time of a couple’s separation or on the death of one partner.

To which our answer is no. For we are believers in choice.

Believers in choice over who you might mingle genitalia with, as we always have been. And also choice over who you might share accommodation with. And even choice as to the economic arrangements that you might want to make surrounding who you mingle or share with. That choice is there in the law as it stands. One is entirely at liberty to live with someone without making formal economic arrangements. One is also able to take up that contract of marriage, something well defined in law. This current suggestion is that that first choice should no longer be available. And as a reduction in choice we're therefore against it.

There is the point of any children that might come from a relationship but their rights and the responsibilities of the parents are already well defined in law.

Essentially the proposal is to introduce common law marriage as a legal position. And English law (except in very odd circumstances involving being in foreign) simply has never recognised it. For the plain and simple reason that if yout want the protections of the contract of marriage then go and get married. Now that all can do so it really isn't the time to make it compulsory.

Economic Nonsense: 12. Minimum wage rates raise living standards for the low paid

When minimum wage rates per hour are set by law, it can raise the wages of those already in jobs and who manage to stay in those jobs.  It has a negative effect on those who lose their jobs because firms no longer find them worth employing at the new rates.  It has negative effects, too, on those trying to enter the labour market who do not yet have enough skills to be worth the minimum wage to potential employers. Firms employ people because they are worth more to the firm than the wages they cost it.  For low-skilled people their value to the firm might be quite low.  Very often it is by starting on low wages and acquiring on-the-job skills that people move up the employment ladder.  Someone who has worked has learned the importance of good time-keeping and following instructions.  They have learned how the firm likes to do things, and are more valuable than an unknown potential employee.  If the minimum wage is set at a level above that of their value to the firm, they find it difficult to secure those starter jobs.

In many countries those with low skills tend to be young people and sometimes those from ethnic minorities, especially if they have not had an adequate education.  When minimum wage rates are increased, there often tends to be increased unemployment among these categories.

When minimum wages were introduced in the UK, the level was initially set sufficiently low that it had a minimal impact on employment.  Subsequent increases are believed to have increased its impact, leading some economists to suggest that a better way of raising the take-home pay of low earners is to stop taking tax off them.  Raising thresholds for income tax and National Insurance increases their wage without it costing employers money and pricing their services out of the market.

No, we really shouldn't build the Swansea tidal lagoon

It's possible that we really should think about tidal power. There's a lot of it about and around our islands, so why not ponder whether we could capture some of it? The real point to ponder of course being whether it makes us all collectively richer. And there we find that there's a slight problem:

Plans to build the world’s first ‘tidal lagoon’ in Swansea Bay have suffered a setback after influential consumer charity Citizens Advice said the project was “appalling value for money” and should not receive subsidies.

Ministers are preparing to begin formal bilateral negotiations with developers over the proposed green energy scheme – a £1bn, six-mile sea wall with turbines to harness the power of the tide, which has already been included in the National Infrastructure Plan.

Tidal Lagoon Swansea Bay is thought to be seeking a guaranteed subsidised price of about £168 for every megawatt-hour (MWh) of electricity it generates over a 35-year period – almost four times the current market price of power.

And there is the problem. All of us having to pay, through our electricity bills, four times the current price for electricity does not make us collectively richer. It makes us, significantly, collectively poorer. Further, sorry about this, no you cannot add in all sorts of greenery arguments and no CO2 emissions and future high gas prices and all that malarkey. This has been comprehensively studied in great detail:

What they've done in the report is look at all of the different variations of the proposal. A great big dam across the whole estuary, the various partial ones, lagoons with turbines and so on. And they've looked at all of the various different costs and benefits of them. Environmental costs, emissions, the cost of gas fired plants which would be the alternative, everything up to and including the kitchen sinks in which the workmen will wash their hands. And what we find is that the more we spend on it, the bigger we make the project, the more it makes us poorer.

For what we're looking for is a positive net present value. That is, all the costs, properly discounted into the future, are a lower number than all of the benefits properly discounted into the future. When we get more benefits than there are costs, we become richer. For the Cardiff Weston Barrage, similar to what Hain is currently proposing, we have a net present value of -£27.1 billion. Yes, that is minus £27.1 billion. The costs of this plan are £27.1 billion, which even in government circles is something that can be described as real money, higher than the benefits that we all get from this scheme. Building it will make us all, collectively, £27.1 billion poorer.

That these plans (and all variations studied have exactly the same result) have a negative net present value is simply the flip side of their needing a high fixed price for the electricity they produce. One is simply the capitalisation of the other, the point that they are just not economically sane projects.

If this project does get off the ground, if some fool does issue a contract for differences at such prices, then we can take that as a marker that the inmates really have taken over the asylum. This is simply a terrible deal that should be immediately rejected.